Episode #277 – The Hidden Life

(M) I believe it’s a gift of the Lord to us, and that it is a gift to those that want a hidden life and are called to it, and to find out what it is. (J) Well, I thought that the really awesome thing was that you basically were developing this message, and you were looking at the old, and you were trying to make it new. And what’s transpired is the original message has evolved, and has developed. But out of this message is also a message that going to be coming at the conference. (M) Hmhmm. (J) And some of your issue was that you were struggling between the fact that ‘this is where I’m at now’, ‘this is where I was then’. And, but, the cool thing is that they’re both of them are going to get released. Basically you’ve got the old message developed and birthed in the booklet. You have, at the conference you have the new message (Martha: yes, yes.) that, you know, and I didn’t want to lose either of them. I was going, “oh no,” but now we’ve got both of them. (M) Ok. (J) The new message is a further development of it in a twenty-five year veteran expression of it. And now you’re seeing it in a new fresh light that is… doesn’t by any means, contradict or discredit the first message. But what it does is, it catapults and goes even higher, and you go, ‘ahuuuuuuh’, wow. So now, you’ve got two steps going to this one place, and I’m excited about it. I’ve got, I’ve got both messages and both are catapulting me into a heavenly life in the hidden life. And so, I’m just grateful that I’m in a place and a position that I get to see it before anyone else, (John is laughingly ‘taunting’) I get to see it, and I get to hear it. So I’m real excited. (Julie) For me part of the wonder of this booklet is how you are able to…you merged in such an incredible way this awesome heavenly vision and the practical. And I heard, you know, you taught me from the very beginning something that’s so precious, that the blessing of authority is that when you come in behind someone else and are willing to come in submitting to what someone else has carved out with God; then you get there faster. And I heard you say yesterday to my daughter that it’s like you carved a path through the jungle and killed all the snakes. (John laughs.) And it’s easier for the ones who are willing, to come behind you. And that’s what in this booklet… I had, as we were wrestling through the birthing of it, I had such a desire for it to, not in any way to take away from the high, heavenly vision you had of it, but I kept thinking about, but what about the new believer, or what about the person that just really doesn’t… just says I don’t know how to even begin in this kind of life. And in this booklet, in short, short span of pages, you cover both. (J) Hmhmm. (Julie) And so it like John said, it’s like you, the Lord is giving you, there’s such a power, and it’s like your messages are becoming so distilled, and so potent in their ability to take us so much further, really fast. And so it’s such a gift for anyone who’s willing to submit themselves and come in under that. (M) Well, I have to thank you for that, Julie, because in the re-writing of it, and the difficulty of that, you said how to, put in some ‘how to’. And I had put in the general process of my life. But I stopped and heard that, and I felt like the Lord gave me the way to put that in. Because I don’t do much ‘how to’, and the best that I can do is say, “Here’s, here’s what I did. (Julie) And as any of us who are around you as you’re going through this process, there’s such a fear and trembling, because I so, I never want to touch the fragrance; there’s such a fragrance to your writing. And so much of the power of your writing is that it awakens such desire, and it calls us to hunger and to just yearn for Him. But I guess I’m appreciating because even in the middle of this, I happen to have a fifteen year old son who said one day, “Has Martha ever written anything about how to have ‘a quiet time’? And it caused, it kind of pierced me, and it caused me to think that there are people out there who… We get, we smell the fragrance that comes from you, the fragrance of Christ, and hunger for it so much, but how to get there? It’s daunting. And I love, I just love the Lord, and I appreciate Him for putting into this booklet some ‘how to’, some actual solid ground for others to be able to follow you in following Him. (M) Well, I just wanted to thank the Lord for that input. See, that makes this a Body issue. John’s had the vision and the persistence to, and the patience, oh my goodness. What reward he’ll have for patience with me. (Martha laughs.) But I wanted the Lord’s credit in you for bringing that, because I did stop and have to think and pray through that, and I like what He gave me to put; I like it. And I’d already written my journey, but just some practical things. So that’s where you all have to keep me on line here. (Julie) Well, you often say that these things are so common to you that you assume that everybody knows this. And I think that a lot of times we’re coming back to you, from other circles of Christendom, and saying, “No, nobody’s talking about this, nobody’s saying the things that you’re saying, nobody’s telling how to go where you’re talking about going, nobody’s even casting the vision to want to. And so it is, it’s extraordinary; you don’t hear this kind… Even like what John was saying, who out in Christendom even calls you to a ‘hidden life’? I mean everything out there is the lust for the grandiose and the grandstand, like you were saying. And, and this is such a radical, but it bears witness to me as this is Jesus Christ, this is the way He lived. He didn’t live the grandstand, He lived the hidden life, and look at the results. And you have done that too; He in you has lived that again. So, it’s a radically different message, but it feels like health and life, and real meat for growing up in Him. (M) Well, it ends up being about… Actually, it’s this; here’s how you get to know Him. But He showed me one scripture that I put in the booklet, how much it is for a greater, as John implied, a greater outreach, unknown and unseen, than we can dream of. It depends on whether you want His glory, or your own. And of course He has to bring you to that; we all want our own glory, basically. (They all laugh.) So He has to bring you to that. But it’s so, so incredible, because what Jesus did came out of His hidden times. And as I was looking at it, pondering it, I realized we don’t know what happened there, except a couple of occasions. It’s still kept secret, what He did in those hours. So… (J) And the impact has remained. (M) Yeah. (J) And is still going on from those hidden hours and moments. (M) Hmhmm. Wow. So we don’t… If we want to impact the world for Him, it actually takes place away from the world. So I’m grateful that you all, I’m grateful for every one of you, and I need you, and your impact and your support and goodness, prayer. All I have to do when I get in a bind about the booklet, I call Carole (Martha laughs) and she starts praying, and I can feel it. So I’ve needed, I’ve needed a lot of help on this. (Carole) Well, for me, when Martha talked about the Word being Jesus, it is. And as I read the booklets, for me, it is the reality for the Word that God speaks is “alive and full of power, making it active, operative, energizing and effective; it is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the breath of life, soul, and of the immortal spirit, and joints and marrow of the deepest parts of our nature, exposing, sifting, analyzing and judging the very thoughts and purposes of the heart.” And as I read that, I have to tell you, I had to repent so, for not being where this place is, repenting and seeing my, not only lack of it, but also being ignited with the hunger and desire for Him in that, in that place, to hear Him in that secret place. And so, and I think about, you know, the fact that it took ten or eleven months. But Isaiah forty says, “But those who wait for the Lord, who expect, look for, and hope in Him, shall change and renew their strength and power; they shall lift their wings and mount up close to God, as eagles mount up to the sun; they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint or become tired.” And that ‘hidden place’, the length of time that it took is evidence of the hidden life. And in waiting for His Voice, and not being willing to write anything out of the flesh, (John: Hmhmm, hmhmm) but to wait for His Words, which are living and active and powerful, as a, even to a two-edged sword. And they will cut and divide someone’s spirit; they do in me.

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